narrow, even low, sense of moral law, unless we regard the advancement of Arthur and the Arthurian idea as the inborn law of his life, the realization of which redeems all the violations of ordinary morality. Vivien, wicked, artful, cunning, cloaking her ambition in the guise of love, plies her woman's wiles, and finally succeeds in gaining the knowledge of his secret art: it is coarse temptation conquering transcendent intellectual power :—

"A storm was coming, but the winds were still,
And in the wild woods of Broceliande,
Before an oak, so hollow, huge, and old,
It look'd a tower of ruin'd mason work,
At Merlin's feet the wily Vivien lay.

She set herself to gain

Him, the most famous man of all those times,
Merlin, who knew the range of all their arts,
Had built the King his havens, ships, and halls,
Was also Bard, and knew the starry heavens,
The people called him wizard.

For Merlin once had told her of a charm,

The which if any wrought on any one,
With woven paces and with waving arms,
The man so wrought on ever seem'd to lie
Closed in the four walls of a hollow tower,
From which was no escape for evermore,

Nor could he see but him who wrought the charm,
Coming and going, and he lay as dead,

And lost to life and use and name and fame.
And Vivien ever sought to work the charm
Upon the great Enchanter of the Time,
As fancying that her glory would be great
According to his greatness whom she quench'd."

After describing the various wiles which Vivien used, we are

told the issue thus:

"She called him lord and liege,

Her seer, her bard, her silver star of eve,
Her god, her Merlin, the one passionate love
Of her whole life; and ever overhead
Bellow'd the tempest, and the rotten branch
Snapt in the rushing of the river-rain
Above them; and in change of glare and gloom
Her eyes and neck glittering went and came;
Till now the storm, its burst of passion spent,
Moaning and calling out of other lands,
Had left the ravaged woodland yet once more

To peace; and what should not have been had been,
For Merlin, overtalked and overworn,

Had yielded, told her all the charm, and slept.

Then, in one moment, she put forth the charm
Of woven paces and of waving hands,
And in the hollow oak he lay as dead,

And lost to life and use and name and fame."

I cannot help thinking that the historical Merlin was a far higher personality than this representation embodies. The enchanter and bard of the sixth century was no commonplace Solomon to fall before vulgar temptation. The conception of him as the typical man of his epocha man torn and distracted by doubts regarding the old Druidic faith, and yet not quite able to embrace the new creed of Columba and Kentigern, fondly turning to the hills for solace is more true historically, and it is a far finer conception than anything either in Malory or Tennyson.

The simple tradition of Tweedside regarding the fate of the seer, is that he lies with Arthur and his knights in the enchanted halls under the purple Eildons, in a sleep that shall never be broken until the mythic sword be drawn and the mysterious bugle sounded. Perhaps

"They have to sleep until the time is ripe

For greater deeds to match their greater thought."

Leyden, in his too little-known poem, The Scenes of Infancy, has finely touched this old belief and expectation of the Cymri, which originated apparently with the poet-seer, the woodland Merlin :

"Wild on the breeze the thrilling lyre shall fling
Melodious accents from each elfin string.
Such strains the harp of haunted Merlin threw
When from his dreams the mountain-sprites withdrew ;
While, trembling to the wires that warbled shrill,

His apple-blossoms waved along the hill.
Hark! how the mountain echoes still retain
The memory of the prophet's boding strain!
Once more begirt with many a martial peer,
Victorious Arthur shall his standard rear,
In ancient pomp his mailed bands display;
While nations wondering mark their strange array,
Their proud commanding port, their giant form,
The spirit's stride, that treads the northern storm.
Where fate invites them to the dread repast,
Dark Cheviot's eagles swarm on every blast.”+

* Leyden, Scenes of Infancy, pp. 300-1.

Of the prophecies attributed to Merlin, one, at least, may be regarded as having a certain and never-failing fulfilment. Speaking of the wild scenery amid which his later days were passed, "Lady," said the Bard, "the flesh upon me shall be rotten before a month shall have passed; but my spirit will not be wanting to all those who shall come here." *

Whatever we may think of this solution of these early days, the problem dimly felt then is even now a pressing one for us. We must now still ask how we are to reconcile or to interpret harmoniously the impressions of nature, the scientific sense of what it presents to us, the imaginative sense of what it suggests to us, its literal and its symbolical aspects, with the supersensible personality which every normal human heart must feel somehow pervades it. How are we to conciliate natural feeling with supernatural emotion? was the question of the reflective nature-worshipper among the Druids. It is not less the question for every reflective man in this nineteenth century; and I am afraid we are not much advanced beyond the sun-worshippers of a thousand years ago on the Tweeddale

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VI.

CUMBRIA AND SCOTLAND UNDER DAVID I. AS PRINCE AND KING, AND DOWN TO THE DEATH OF ALEXANDER III., IN 1285-6.

FROM the seventh to the eleventh centuries, there is much obscurity over the course of history in Scotland. When the light begins to dawn in the eleventh century, and brighten in the twelfth, the features of the country are very different from the original Cymric and Pictish period. In the north of the Forth there is evidence that a fusion has taken place between Scot and Pict--the former gaining supremacy, and giving the name Scotia or Scotland first to that part of the country, and then to the whole land.

To the south of the Forth, or Scots' Water, in what is now known as the Lowlands, there are signs that the Angles of Bernicia―including mainly Berwick and East Lothianhave become the dominant race in population and in language. The Cymri of Strathclyde have still a distinct appellation as Cumbrenses, and the Picts, or probably mixed Gaels of Galloway are known as Galwenses, but they are being fast merged in the Angle population, which is spread